Life has been hard and thankless the last 10 months due to COVID: virtual learning, kids always home, working from home, messed up holidays, no church, and all the other things that go with it. I’ve been wondering if I’m making a difference and then I remembered the starfish story.
The original version is a 16-page essay titled “The Star Thrower,” written by Loren Eiseley and published in 1969. Most people, though, are familiar with a short adaptation like this one:
One day, an old man was walking along a beach that was littered with thousands of starfish that had been washed ashore by the high tide. As he walked he came upon a young boy who was eagerly throwing the starfish back into the ocean, one by one.
Puzzled, the man looked at the boy and asked what he was doing. Without looking up from his task, the boy simply replied, “I’m saving these starfish, Sir”.
The old man chuckled aloud, “Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?”
The boy picked up a starfish, gently tossed it into the water and turning to the man, said, “I made a difference to that one!”
Photo by Nhobgood Nick Hobgood – Own Work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6279893
